The essence of rural upstate New York railroading/David Butts and Charlie Crawford I 54

n its heyday the New York Central was one of the largest railroads in the United States, second only to

the Pennsylvania Railroad, with whom the New York Central merged with in the late 1960’s. The New York Central had tracks stretching from New York and Boston to Chicago and St. Louis, even into Canada, for a total of approx- imately 11,200 miles of railroad. Many modelers are familiar with the New York Central’s name passenger trains, like the 20th Century Limited pulled

by 4-6-4 J-class Hudson steam locomo- tives in the 1940’s, or the four-track main along the river of the same name. Being a New York Central modeler, Charlie Crawford chose to depart from the more common big time, mainline railroading many NYC modelers pre- fer. Instead, he models the New York Central’s Adirondack Division in up- state New York as it was in the 1920’s in HO scale. This location and time of- fers a different type of railroading, where smaller steam locomotives such

as Consolidations, Moguls, Ten Wheel- ers, Mikados and shorter rolling stock prevailed. Visiting upstate New York and the Adirondack Mountains on camping trips, Charlie fell in love with the area and its railroad history and learned the New York Central had served the region. For research he turned to vari- ous books, including Railroads of the Adirondacks: A History, by Michael Kudish, and Fairy Tale Railroad, by Henry A. Harter. U.S. Geological Sur